Unto Us a Son is Given

Donna Leon

Mar 2019 · RB Media · Narrated by David Colacci

About this audiobook

"Your situation is always ambiguous, isn't it, Guido?", his father-in-law, Count Orazio Falier, observes of Donna Leon's soulful detective, Guido Brunetti, at the beginning of her superb 28th Brunetti novel, Unto Us A Son Is Given. "The world we live in makes that necessary," Brunetti presciently replies. Count Falier was urging his Venetian son-in-law to investigate, and preferably intervene in, the seemingly innocent plan of the Count's best friend, the elderly Gonzalo Rodriguez de Tejada, to adopt a much younger man as his son. Under arcane Italian inheritance laws this man would then be heir to Gonzalo's entire fortune, a prospect Gonzalo's friends find appalling. For his part, Brunetti wonders why the old man, a close family friend, can't be allowed his pleasure in peace. And yet, what seems innocent on the Venetian surface can cause tsunamis beneath. Gonzalo unexpectedly, and literally, drops dead on the street, and his good friend Berta Dodson, just arrived in Venice for the memorial service, is strangled in her hotel room?having earlier sent Gonzalo an email saying "We are the only ones who know you cannot do this," referring to the adoption. Now with an urgent case to solve, Brunetti reluctantly untangles the long-hidden mystery in Gonzalo's life that ultimately led to murder?a resolution that brings him way more pain than satisfaction. Once again, Donna Leon brilliantly plumbs the twists and turns of the human condition, reuniting us with some of crime fiction's most memorable and enduring characters.

About the author

Donna Leon was born on September 29, 1942 in Montclair, New Jersey. She taught English literature in England, Switzerland, Iran, China, Italy and Saudi Arabia. She is the author of a Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery series. Friends in High Places, a novel from the series, won the Crime Writers Association Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction in 2000. German Television has produced 16 Commissario Brunetti mysteries for broadcast. She was a crime reviewer for the Sunday Times. She has written the libretto for a comic opera and has set up her own opera company, Il Complesso Barocco. Her titles Jewels of Pardise, The Golden Egg, By Its Cover, Falling in Love and The Waters of Eternal Youth made The New York Times Bestseller List.